Chapter Three: Three...two...one...
Position H-5, Zerg territory, Aiur
Three kilometers. They were three kilometers from the crash site. Normally, on an ideal, flat plain with no physical barriers impending their progress, it would take twenty marines in fully outfitted armor twenty minutes to run three kilometers. On the Creep, however, with random Zerglings chasing after them...maybe never, Nacdle thought, as he led the pack.
When the Zulu had dropped down from the trees, Jones and his men suddenly realized what they were getting into in rescuing their fellow marines: three kilometers of unending Creep, with a maze of Spore colonies and other bizarre structures along the way. Every step they took could lead them into an ambush.
The Creep didn't just serve as nourishment for the structures that grew on it. It was a living organism, an organic computer that sent an unending flood of information to various "commanding" Zerg units every time an intruder took a step on it. This information was then processed and sent psionically to Zerg units within the enemy's position. It was like having a HQ that was omnipresent and knew the battle maneuvers as soon as their own troops did.
So why the hell aren't they taking us out? Nacdle wondered.
They had started running, straight towards the dropship, avoiding Sunken colonies by running around them, jogging by the Spore colonies they had been ordered to destroy. There was just not enough time to kill them, and they had no idea what repercussions it could lead to destroying one, since each was linked to another colony, and to the Cerebrates, which could instantly send reinforcements.
Nacdle was lost in his thoughts when he abruptly stopped running, leading to a curse by the marine behind him, who had rammed into the officer. He had just noticed a smoldering mass of flesh and blood, the remains of a Sunken colony. That was very, very close. I wouldn't have seen that damn thing until the root was ripping my body apart, he thought. But where-
He looked up he heard a wraith's pegasus engines started to pick up speed, screaming like a banshee. It was heading directly toward the ruined form of the dropship. The tail was slightly damaged; sticky green gelatinous material was still stuck on it. It must have killed it, Nacdle thought. Now's the best chance of getting air support all day.
"Frequency: Public," he said, switching his ICD. The device beeped once to confirm.
"Wraith 2-5, wraith 2-5," Nacdle said, reading the I.D. off of the Wraith's wing, "this is squad commander of Zulu-1. Requesting your assistance, over."
"Roge that, Zulu, this is Captain Ander. What's up?" The man's thick, twangy accent was cool and composed, like he was confident that nothing could kill him.
"You see that site of the crashed dropship, Captain?"
"I'm looking right at it."
"We're trying to rescue the squadrons inside it. We need some air coverage in case some things get too dicey. Can you loiter over us awhile?"
"Vector, locked-in. I copy that commander. I'll 'loiter' around here awhile. Say, you've got some Zerglings being toasted by your men."
"I copy." Nacdle looked to his right where the six Zerglings were exploding, being dropped by Jones' men. One of them, specialist Johnny Maxwell, held his squad heavy weapon to his hip and toasted a Zergling with dozens of hypersonic rounds from his big gun. The idiot almost looked liked he thought this was too easy. Dumbass!
"Stop fucking firing, it's already dead!" Nacdle shouted, lifting up his visor. He squinted, the Protossian sun taking a toll on his eyes.
Maxwell stopped, looking confused. "Just having some fun, sir." Nacdle took a look at the man. Neural resocialization. No other way to explain the poor grunt.
Only six? Nacdle was stunned as he looked at the insectoid-like creatures. If Zerg wanted to kill them, they could do it easily, why hadn't they killed them yet? Maybe Jones wasn't so much as an idiot as he thought. He and his squad had, after all, just killed six Zerglings. But why didn't they send more...There was something they didn't know about, something that the Zerg were planning or already doing. Luck, that has to be it. They know we're not that big of a threat to them, so they don't want to kill us right away. He paused, thinking about what he had just said. A happy thought.
"Ok, we've got the air coverage we've been waiting for, boys. Two kilometers to the site, let's get moving!" Maybe with the wraith circling they could get there faster.
He turned back. "And don't waste your ammo!" he said, shooting a disgusted looked through his visor at Lieutenant Jones. Underneath the other man's shield, he knew Jones returned that look.
Above positions H-5, H-6, Aiur
Ander viewed the sky and checked his sensors, and, like Nacdle, wondered what was wrong. He had fought in previous battles with Zerg before, and they got downright pissed when one of their buildings was destroyed. So why haven't they dropped some Scourge on my tailpipe? he wondered. He knew blowing up that damn colony was dumb, but anger had triggered it, and he was waiting for the repercussions. Discipline was still lacking with new pilots out of the Citadel like him.
None had come.
He saw the stronghold, one of the massive Hives rising out of the ground. The spikes and odd shapes on it made it seem like it was an peculiar attraction at a carnival. A deadly one too. He reached the same conclusion Nacdle had: They're waiting for something...
He looked down, seeing the thin snake of men running towards their ground zero, some of the men looking haggard as they ran with their big combat suits on. It was making Ander jumpy if the Zerg didn't act with their usual force. They're planning something big, and we won't know until they unleash the hell.
He checked his fuel gauge next. Half empty. Fuel shortages had cut down fuel allotted to starfighters, and most had gone without a full tank. He had a flight time of less than an hour, max. Then off to the replenishment vessel, Ander thought.
It's going to be a long day.
Position H-5, Zerg Territory, Aiur
Two kilometers. The remnants of Zulu reached a strange growth, a massive bulk of a spore colony. But this one had two "heads" for shooting aircraft. Genes must have been spliced the wrong way, Jones thought. His men were resting by the strange Zerg structure, listening to the thumping heart of an organic weapon.
Their armor had taken a toll on them. Running with fifty pounds of metal and plastic plus carrying twenty-five pounds of gear, not to mention each man's gun, was killing the Sarians. Against other Terran armies, Umoja's veterans needed the heavy CMC armor to stand up against spike bullets, but against mobile Zerg troops...Nacdle's veteran mercs ruled.
Nacdle's men had loose armor and modified guns were light as hell, to give them more flexibility and agility, so they stood guard, surveying the ruined Protoss landscape for any threat.
"We can't linger here, Lieutenant," Nacdle said, walking over to Jones. "I've got a bad feeling about this."
Jones jumped as he suddenly heard the systematic spraying bullets made by a heavy gun, a thump, thump, thump, as they turned their armored heads around. Maxwell, the same marine who had mutilated a Zergling and wasted his bullets, was laughing again and shooting his gun into backside of the Spore colony.
"Stop it, damnit!" Nacdle went over once again to discipline his men, Jones thought.
"What the hell do you think you're doing!" Nacdle screamed. His face was full of a contorted rage.
"Just-just doing my job, sir. We were supposed to take out these things, and I'm wondering why ain't." Maxwell tried to look Nacdle in the eye, but refrained.
"You think you can kill one Spore colony with that toy of yours? And if you do, you don't think the Zerg are gonna come with everything they have and kill us? Goddamn stupid bastard! Watch!"
Nacdle swiftly grabbed a knife from a pocket on his armor and cut a neat hole in the flesh of the colony. He let the crimson blood drip, and then held up the knife. It began rusting immediately, as it was reduced to a mass of yellow metal. He threw it on the Creep with a face of disgust, turning to the Umojan squad as they looked on the ground, bewildered.
"This is what happens when goddamn idiots like you start hurting the thing. It's gonna fight back, and first thing it does is produces a corrosive venom in its blood. One goddamn spurt of blood gets on you, you won't have your armor to protect you anymore."
He looked for anyone to challenge him. Jones glared. A tense, lingering silence permeated the damp Aiuran air, as "A" squadron gathered around Jones, and the mercs of "B" gathered around Nacdle. The mercenary commander grimaced. Zulu's brittle cooperation between two different types of soldiers, patriots and mercs, was breaking down.
Nacdle's ICD crackled. "Lieutenant, my sensors show-" Nacdle heard a scream from his left, and a demonic growl.
"Hydralisks!" he shouted, "get cover, get cover!"
Nacdle turned around to see another of Jones' men screaming and shooting at two of the massive "Hydralisks," twisted, demonic animals from hell. The skeletal faces completed a thick, armored carapace fan on the tops of their heads, reminded Nacdle they were still fighting Zerg, after not seeing them for so long. An ominous death rattle came from the chests of the creatures. The long, snaky tail of the Hydralisks whisked from side to side, daring any man to come close.
The man who was screaming, Pvt. Jimmy Campbell, was standing only five feet away from the monsters, yelling and firing wildly in the air.
The Umojans lost any type of discipline, even after fighting holos of the beasts for weeks at basic training. Jones tried rally his troops while other Umojans ran or fired a wild stream of ammunition.
"Ashley! Smith! Cover the flank! Jones, get the hell away from that position!" Nacdle's voice drowned out the din of screams on the ICD.
The bullets that were being pumped out of Jones' and Nacdle's squad from behind the defective Spore colony bounced off the Hydras, strangely deflecting off the tough carapace. Campbell gurgled and went down as a Hydra opened its chest, firing the subsonic needles lined in its chest, one by one. One hit Campbell on the neck of his power suit, another on his breastplate. Another man yelled and dropped his gun from behind the colony as two needles protruded from his rubass visor, designed specially to withstand an impact by absorbing rather than shattering. Good thing it worked, else...
"Nacdle, Nacdle! Get away from the fuckin' middle, you're in the line of fire!" Jones screamed through his comlink at Nacdle, who was so preoccupied in staring intently at the Zerg, that he didn't even notice that he was standing right between the marines and Hydralisks. His second brush of death. What the hell am I doing here? He ran behind the twin-headed structure, looking at its strangeness; the organic weapon seemed to be beating like a heart, waiting for the Hydralisks to finish the job with the intruders.
Nacdle's mind clicked.
"Ok, Jones, get your men to distract the two Hydras, but don't let them come closer, damnit! Maxwell, aim for the chest, the chest!"
Nacdle twisted a frag grenade onto the grenade launcher of his modified C-14.
The two Hydralisks opened the chests again, making a wet squishing noise as needles ejected off the lining of their chest cavities in their bodies. Nacdle fired. The grenade arced and thudded inside one of the Hydralisk's chest opening. It stopped firing, a surprised grin fixed on its Satanic face, beady eyes sunken with astonishment. The particular look was still fixed on its face as it blew up, chunks of fleshy chest showering the air as the head did a spin in the air and landed with a sickening thud.
"Jones! Get two men out there and get Campbell's body! Ashley, covering fire, everyone else, run the hell away from the Spore colony. Just go, go!"
The other Hydralisk look in surprised at the demise of his brother, giving Nacdle time to kill it.
Nacdle ran as a shower of bullets impacted the Hydralisk's dense, bony plate armor from Ashley's gun. Stopping in front of the bizarre structure, as he pulled a small contraption from a pouch on his CMC armor. The creature, suddenly confused with two targets, raised its scythes to decapitate Nacdle.
Nacdle inserted a "sticky" grenade right into the wound he cut into the Spore colony, dodging the blow without even looking at the Hydralisk in a easy, fluid motion. Ashley trigger finger slipped slightly from the trigger, as his shock filtered through his mind. How the hell did he do that...
Nacdle ran. Don't look back, don't look back, don't look back...
The grenade detonated after Nacdle had sprinted twenty-five meters. The colony blew up, creating a surprisingly small vicinity of debris as the heads of the organic weapon exploded, sending a fountain of stored biological flak from an artery that pumped it up like a giant heart. Liters of deadly acid went up...and went down, splashing on the Hydralisk.
Nacdle watched as it writhed in pain, clawing at its body and face with its own sickles, mutilating itself in a sickening display of violence.
Jones watched too, his face behind the hard faced armor. He had never felt so sick in his life. He was glad the visor hid his face.
Nacdle felt no sorrow or regret. It is had been a human, the violence would have sent chills up his spine, but this was an demonic animal trying to kill him, and the more it was mutilated, the better he felt.
Aboard crashed dropship T-34, Position H-6
Pfc. Rob Jonson looked at his chronometer in the dark, thanking God that his suit's night vision worked. 25:45:51. He had set his watch to the Aiuran day, six hours longer than Tarsonis Time, which was thirty hours. He was in the ruined bulk of the dropship, sitting in the corner as he heard the metallic scratching of claws of the Zergling on top.
He was the religious one, praying before his drop, and praying during the dizzying landing, and praying when it crashed. His ancestors had brought the religion from Earth, where it was banned, like most other things that promoted diversity in the human race.
They didn't have need to be diverse anymore, Jonson thought, since there were now two other species as advanced as them. To the Zerg and Protoss, they were only humans, not Sarians, Caucasians, or Christians. Species, race, and religion didn't matter to the nightmarish killers the Zerg were said to be, or to the strange Protoss.
Survival did.
He was part of O'toole's squadron, and he also watched as the dropship landed on his buddy, Pfc. Pete Black. Black wasn't that religious, but Jonson prayed for his soul. He prayed for his own soul too, knowing that he was going to die here.
Another part of him snorted and ridiculed what he was doing. Maybe I sound too melodramatic, but death is death.
"Jonson! Jonson!" The voice of his squadron commander was filled with agony. "A little help here, Jonson? My legs are stuck. Aw, hell, don't worry about it. Just keep on praying." The green night vision in the visor had automatically switched to in the dark helped Jonson see O'toole, vomit and blood covering his armor, to the right of him. The armored legs of his commander's suit was caught in two ruptured steel ribs of the ship. O'toole was grinning at him in an crazy manner.
"You think we'll make it out of here alive, sir?"
"I don't know. Don't know. Don't know the answer to that goddamn question now. We're all going to rot and die here and then the Zerglin's will be chomping on our no-good carcasses! Do you think we'll make it out of here alive, boys?" O'toole yelled. With a look of disgust most men turned away from him, not wanting to think about the grisly deaths that were laying on the floor.
My commander's gone crazy, Jonson thought. The world's gone crazy. Why the heck aren't we fight back? We can take on the Zerglings. The shrill scream rang from outside the dropship once more, as dozens of Zerglings scratched on the hull. It silenced him. Death was waiting. Jonson slumped on the dropship's side, hoping their deliverance would come.
Position H-6, Zerg Territory
One kilometer. They had ran far and away from the stump of the Spore colony, fearing retaliation from more Zerg.
Surprisingly, there was only one casualty out of the twenty men. Corporal Andy Hawkins had two spines stuck in the visor his helmet, the green poison a few centimeters away from his eyes. Jones had delicately pulled them out. Pvt. Jimmy Campbell was poisoned in the chest and neck by the needles, which punctured and broke his skin.
"Could've been a lot worse, commander," medical corpsman Jan "J.J." Jast said. He neatly undid the helmet and upper armor on Campbell as he laid on the Creep. His eyes were closed, breathing rapid, and nose and mouth bleeding. "If the spines had punctured right straight through the armo', it would've kilt him instantly."
"Can you do anything else for him, JJ?" Jones asked.
"No sir, my antidotes and equipment was on that dang dropship. We was gonna drop it until it was crashing. Then we just jumped." Jast pulled out the portable stretcher on his back and then strapped on his gun to his armor. "I'm gonna get him on here."
"We gotta get to the ship soon. I don't want any of my men dead." Nacdle turned around to see Jones looking at him through the visor. That tense voice was still there.
"Let's go then."
They sprinted the last kilometer. Jones and Nacdle lead the pack, followed closely by Jast and Hawkins, who were carrying the now unconscious Campbell. They were followed by fifteen sweating men, running like invisible Zerg were chasing them all the way back to their home. Night was beginning to show its tones, first, as an unusually red sun drooped lower from the Aiuran landscape. The dark nights of Aiur were coming. And with the night Zerg would emerge.
"Nacdle?" The lieutenant's ICD crackled again, as they reached ground zero.
"This is Ander. I've gotta get out of here immediately, before my bird runs out of fuel. Your ETA is 'bout three minutes. No Zerg in sight, except on the dropship. You guys can handle those. Have a happy trip."
"Thanks, Ander. I'll be seeing you later." Nacdle wondered how true that would be.
Now they could definitely see the dropship. It had landed flat; flat was significant. It meant that men could still be in there, alive and unhurt. But a parade of Zerglings was on the ship, digging into the metal frame like a dog trying to bury a bone. The cockpit of the dropship was at an odd angle, like it had hit the ground first. It almost looks like the dropship landed on something...Jones thought. The bottom of the ship was centimeters off the ground on one end, and the tail jutted out in the air, ruined.
They were now approximately two hundred meters from the wreck. Jones and Nacdle, along with the mercenary Pfc. Jack Smith stood there, watching the Zerglings claw the ship.
"Shit, let's go kill those damn things," Smith shouted. Smith inhaled deeply, and Nacdle turned his receptors lower, feeling the waves of adrenaline pumping through the other man. The kid's taking a shot of stim!
"Yeah, that's it. Nothing like a good stim."
Nacdle nodded. "They haven't spotted us yet. Jast, Hawkins, stay at the rear. Smith cover the left flank, you'll slowly circle them. Jones..."
"We'll kill them. There's not much need for tactics here when we have a few Zerglings to deal with," Jones said. Nacdle imagined the sneer forming behind that helmet, and then nodded. "Suit yourself."
They began running, followed by more men, guns at the ready, wanting to wreak bloody havoc at the Zerg. Jast and Hawkins put their patient gently on the ground, hoping they could help Campbell survive, as they tried to soothe the man. Smith, the stimed marine, ran too fast to cover the flank, eager to kill.
The dropship unexpectedly moved.
Smith never even had time to blink. The dropship miraculously lifted itself a few meters off the ground, but Nacdle could see a tongue-like organ, sharpened to a deadly point, lifting the ship up. The tongue went up...and down, burrowing into the ground. And the tip came up again, right into the face of Smith, lopping off his head neatly from the rest of his body. Nacdle watched, for the first time in horror, as Smith's decapitated body stood there, wobbling a few seconds, and then toppled like a bunch of dominoes.
"Get out! Get out of the range!" Jones screamed as he grabbed Nacdle by the arm and dragged him back to the wounded marine on the stretcher. The other men began running as well, as Nacdle still looked back in surprise at one of his men's bodies. The tongue burrowed again, but hit nothing as it came up.
They sat down on the Creep as they breathed, out of breath, inhaling the oxygen-nitrogen mixture of Aiur, out of range from the root's deadly grasp. Jast looked at Jones in surprise and smiled. He had been too busy treating Campbell to even look up at the ship.
"Something wrong, sir?"
Jones looked at him with disbelief.
"Didn't you see? There's a fucking Sunken colony right under the dropship."